This has to be the all-time low point in the 48-year history of Rolling Stone. One of the last remaining outlets for long-form journalism, which used to be everywhere, the magazine has been forced to retract one of its biggest stories, and it has nobody to blame but itself for the great damage it has done to the fight against sexual assault on the college campus.

A loudly publicized RS article by Sabrina Rubin Erdely purported to document a shocking instance of gang rape during a fraternity party at the University of Virginia, using it to highlight a very serious — and very real — nationwide problem. But Ms. Erdely’s scoop began unraveling almost as soon as it was published. It was, it developed, largely based on interviews with but one traumatized victim, and the rest of her story didn’t hold up to scrutiny. Potential corroborators disputed the main witness’s version of events, and the fraternity in question hadn’t even held a party that night. Other journalists are shaking their heads at RS’s utter failure to double-check its reporting, at every step of the process, even after its fact-checking department warned that the factual backup was unusually flimsy. An independent review by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism (in fairness, itself promptly commissioned by an appalled Rolling Stone) ripped the magazine for ignoring basic rules of reporting. Soon, RS was reduced to the butt of a Jon Stewart bit.

There is plenty of blame to go around. Ms. Erdely and her editors evidently committed the logical error called “confirmation bias,” which means they began with a proposition and searched for real-life support. In their victim, known as “Jackie,” they felt they had found what they needed and, in deference to her psychological trauma (or so the editors say), they failed to subject her story to the scrutiny that would have been employed by any decent high-school newspaper. A journalist reports verifiable facts.

It’s a delicate subject, to say the least, about which we definitely don’t know enough. A few weeks ago, two activists told Bill Maher that on average, one in five college women would face sexual assault by the time they graduated. That number sounded way high to me, so I did some digging around. The stat comes from the Centers for Disease Control, which says: “In a study of undergraduate women, 19% experienced attempted or completed sexual assault since entering college.” Wow. Amazing. In my defense, though, I submit that I was way off in my estimation for one simple reason. I’m a man.

A long-ago girlfriend, with whom I worked in the same professional setting, years later casually mentioned the gauntlet of potential hit-ons she’d had to endure when we were together, mostly from older gents who were also part of that setting. I had been absolutely oblivious. Nor had she cried on my shoulder about it; to her, it was just an annoying part of everyday life as an attractive young woman. You guys have no idea, bub. Let’s take that same dynamic and dial back the maturity level so that both people are in college. Now the one-in-five starts to look much closer.

If you’re not a rock star, jock star or movie star, it’s hard to imagine having to fend off potential suitors, but women (adjust for LGBT relationships however you wish; let’s just say, the “naturally pursued”) do it all the time. And pursuers have to stick their necks out every so often and face casual rebuke: most women I know have many ways to clearly indicate they’re not interested in a romantic relationship, because life forces them to develop those signals. (Or hmmm: was it just me?) You may wind up feeling foolish for trying, but by me, that’s not sexual assault. When you don’t yet know enough to (or are too drunk to) read a NO THANKS signal, you’re getting into some deep water that no amount of “Boy, did we get hammered!” can bail. And even if a woman gets used in the worst way by some budding Stanley Kowalski, it’s still up to her to report the damn thing and go through the humiliation all over again. Because little lady, the burden of proof is on you.

The worst part of this is that many — especially our pals on the pale, male and stale far right — don’t believe in college sexual assault any more than they do in climate change or evolution. It’s just a bunch of gals getting too tipsy and marijuanaed up and regretting the hookup the next day. And this false alarm is going to set societal awareness back even more. Red-state pinup Ann Coulter has already begun: “From the Duke lacrosse team, the Columbia mattress girl and the University of Virginia, the left has not been able to produce one actual rape on a college campus. It’s beginning to look as if the rape of the Sabine women never happened, either.” College rape is nothing but another left-wing canard.

I also have trouble squaring Rolling Stone’s decision to go to the mats for its employees with my natural outrage that no Wall Street bankers are in jail for ruining the economy, no Cheney-Bush goombahs were punished for torturing human beings and inspiring legions of terrorists, and cop after cop walks away clean unless a camera lens is stuck in his snoot while he’s committing murder (and sometimes even then). Seems like if you’re in for a penny, you’d be in for a pound.

It’s a tragedy all around: for an unjustly pilloried fraternity and university, for any serious response to assault on campus, and for the journalistic reputation of a paper that should never have let this one get sent to layout.

7/30/15: The Times reports today that RS managing editor Will Dana will be leaving. It’s almost certainly related to the mishandling of this story. So here, at least one head did roll.

11/5/16: Yesterday Rolling Stone lost a defamation suit filed by Nicole P. Eramo, a former assistant dean of students at U.Va., who said she had been depicted as the “chief villain” in the article. A federal jury found against the magazine just in time for its 50th anniversary next year.

Rolling Stone [full disclosure: my grad-school beer-money provider and record-shelf-filling helper] is in the hot seat just now for selecting as its current cover photo not an Annie Leibovitz or Mark Seliger portrait of a celebrity, but a “selfie” cameraphone shot of 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the alleged Boston Marathon bomber who’s still alive. This image has caused a tsunami of outrage, especially in New England, where the vicious April 15 attack that killed three and wounded 264 others still has many in a state of shock.

Some companies have banned the issue outright. First, New England-based CVS/Walgreens and Tedeschi Foods announced their refusal to sell it. They were later joined by – as of this posting – Rite-Aid, Kmart and 7-Eleven company-owned stores (the home office will encourage its franchisees to follow suit). Knee-jerk cries of “censorship” have inevitably followed, but this is a tough moral call for many of my well-meaning friends, who are really wrestling with the issue. I am too.

The first thing we think of has to be the hundreds of victims and their anguished loved ones. That’s why we can understand the outrage even when we don’t share it in a visceral way. What would we do in their place? Probably scream and shout – and weep – as well. Grief isn’t rational, and it hasn’t been that long since half a million people came out on a beautiful spring day to celebrate a Boston tradition and cheer on their heroes. This wound is only beginning to heal; it’s still there.

Note that there’s little objection (in fact, I haven’t heard any at all) to Janet Reitman’s cover story itself, a fine piece of journalism that you can read here (make note of the editors’ response to this controversy at the head of the piece). It calmly depicts how the kid next door could turn into a radical and ultimately a monster, the precise word used on the cover. The troublesome part isn’t even the image itself. It can’t be. Back in May it was printed on the front page of the New York Times, in color, in the center, above the fold, and nobody said a word.

The May 5, 2013 front page.

What bothers people is the juxtaposition of this image with Rolling Stone, and the outrage has to come largely from people who don’t read Rolling Stone (let’s be honest, that’s most people). I infer this from comment after comment decrying the magazine’s “glorification” of an alleged murderer. From the outside, Rolling Stone probably looks something like Tiger Beat: it’s only youth culture, the cover should rightly depict nothing more profound than the latest rocker or pop-culture sensation. Heck, getting on the cover even inspired a Top Ten novelty hit in 1973. What outsiders don’t realize is that Rolling Stone is one of the last bastions of long-form journalism, and has been practicing this venerable profession since its founding. Not a single issue goes to press without at least one piece, maybe even the cover story, which has nothing to do with show business but is meant only to inform and illuminate its readers on the issues of the day. Longtime RS readers were not surprised to see this image on the cover, only found it remarkable for its stated purpose. Here’s your bomber, this…kid.

“They made him look so glamorous.” Nope, it’s only a selfie, that’s you doing that, by virtue of his proximity to the Rolling Stone logo. What you can’t tell from looking at the digital image above, what you can only suss by holding the printed copy in your hands, is that unlike most of RS’s cover portraits, on which you can damn near see individual hair follicles, this photo began so low-res that, blown up for the RS cover, it almost loses focus; here, you can see pixels. In person, it registers instantly that this shot was clearly taken by the subject with a cameraphone. Like the selfies you take. He’s a tousle-haired teenager with a mobile phone, just like RS’s core audience, and that can’t help but unnerve some of them. The image’s power issues from its very normalcy: to any even remotely contemplative kid, it’s uncomfortably like looking into a mirror. Which leads to…

“He’s become a role model. He’ll inspire others.” Any kid unhinged enough to view what Tsarnaev allegedly did as a good thing, to conclude that being on the cover of Rolling Stone is worth an act of mass carnage, will be sorely disappointed to find that they’ve already done their terrorist cover. Besides, we’re full of enough self-hating, gun-toting, random-snuffing “role models” to satisfy a nation of over-armed, sick depressives, and nobody does boo about that, not even when the victims are a room full of first graders.

Another role model?

“They just did this to make money.” I would strike the word “just,” but they publish every issue to make money, and choose every cover subject to attract attention. Will newsstand sales of this issue spike? You’ve already seen the cover, and you can read Ms. Reitman’s story with a single click, so maybe not – especially since it won’t be available at all those outlets. But as New York Times media columnist David Carr wrote, when’s the last time somebody asked you, “Have you seen the cover of Rolling Stone?”

You have the right to decline to sell anything you like. (As a Times editorial pointed out, in CVS’s case, this means cigarettes are fine, Rolling Stone not so.) You also have the right to refrain from patronizing a particular company for whatever reason you like: an ugly logo, a surly server, an act of censorship — or a cover image that offends you. It’s as simple, and as complicated, as that.

1) I used to write for the paper a long time ago, back when it was based in San Francisco and was a tabloid that folded over once for the newsstand. You tend to like your hometown, no matter what happens to it after you move away.

2) My droogie Andrew Dansby joined the RS Online posse early in its digital incarnation, and occasionally even got some notes pubbed in the print edition. I subbed and read the mag in solidarity, often with widely incredulous eyes. (AD’s now a poobah at the Houston Chronicle, and the RS Online staff back in NY are still postin their little asses off.)

3) I’m too old for VICE.

4) And, truth be told, for RS, tho it helps me pretend.

5) Almost ten years ago, I got a letter from the RS sub dept. Would you like a LIFETIME sub to our mag? Send us $49.95 and it’s yours. I did, and they popped me an extra fifty years. I think the marketing department somehow knew how old I was (yeah, ya dumb boomer: THE REST OF YER PITIFUL LITTLE LIFETIME! HAW HAW HAW!), but still coveted my zipcode to help offset their vanishing youthquake demos. Anyway, I’m at least gonna receive the mag until I die, unless I live to 104, and by that time I hope I don’t even remember what Rolling Stone frickin is.